After Minnesota now Milan: ICE officials will be during the Winter Olympics starting February 6th also be used in Italy. For days, Italy’s government had been under the post-fascist and Trump-Busenfreundin Giorgia Meloni A possible presence of the now globally notorious immigrant raiders from the USA at the games was denied, but now it is official. ICE personnel arrive as part of the US security forces accompanying the US delegation.
On Monday, Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi dismissed possible rumors along these lines as “a polemic about nothing” and declared that “ICE as such will never operate in Italy” – but then added that “until now” “the Americans, like everyone else, have not listed the presences that will be here in Italy in the wake of the delegations.”
However, the minister then received assistance from the US Embassy in Rome, which announced that “various federal agencies, including Homeland Security Investigations, the investigative component of ICE” would be on site in Milan, just as “as at previous Olympic Games”.
Just a few hours earlier, Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani had distanced himself from the USA and commented on the shocking images from Minneapolis with the words that the recordings showed “abuse” and that there was “a big difference between the arrest and the killing of an armed man.”
“The SS won’t come”
The majority of Italians and the Italian media see it the same way. When all the TV news prominently reported on Tuesday evening that the ICE was coming to the Olympics, numerous stations had the news with the videos the shooting of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, who had shaken up the world.
Since then, the Meloni government has been trying to limit the damage. Sometimes it is said that only “three to four” ICE officers come, sometimes there is talk of ten. Interior Minister Piantedosi, on the other hand, sticks to his original denial by splitting hairs – because the US security guards are not on “operational” duty in Italy, but are only on duty in the US consulate in Milan, in the US operations center there. And Foreign Minister Tajani also had to announce that “the SS isn’t coming” and that there aren’t “masked officers with assault rifles” on the way.
The opposition sees it differently. The mayor of Milan, Beppe Sala from the ranks of the moderate left Partito Democratico (PD), who is not usually known for shrill tones, declared in a radio broadcast that the ICE was “a militia that kills”. The mayor added that he felt “not protected” by Interior Minister Piantedosi and that it was clear that “they (the ICE officers; ed.) are not welcome in Milan.” He concluded by saying, “Can’t we just say no to Trump once? The ICE agents can’t come to Italy because they don’t agree with our democratic way of ensuring security.”
And the Milan PD MP Matteo Mauri followed up. “The same government that defines itself as sovereign does not defend the dignity of Italian democracy, but is only able to say, ‘I obey’ to Trump,” Mauri explained.
Giorgia Meloni herself remains silent. She has good reason to. While Donald Trump had 42 percent approval among Italian voters a year ago, this figure has now fallen to just 22 percent – a clear sign that many of Meloni and Matteo Salvini’s supporters now reject him. The antipathy may also have increased thanks to incidents like the one in Minneapolis last weekend. There, ICE agents stopped a car with a camera team from the Italian state broadcaster RAI on board and shouted that if they continued filming, the ICE men would “break the car windows and drag you out.”
It is already clear that Italy’s opposition will not give up. On Wednesday next week, Interior Minister Piantedosi will have to face the House of Representatives for a debate about the ICE operation in Milan. However, all opposition parties are planning a rally in the Olympic metropolis as early as next Saturday. The participants should come with whistles, just like the people who have been protesting in Minneapolis for weeks.